


For love of country

by cowlicklesschick



Category: Designated Survivor (TV)
Genre: Gen, also she is my idol and i love her, but she's so SAD and it's NOT FAIR, hannah is my child and deserves hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 03:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10981974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cowlicklesschick/pseuds/cowlicklesschick
Summary: Or, how I made myself sad in less than 500 words.





	For love of country

She hates crying.

Always has, really, mostly because it gives her a headache and she wants nothing but a nap afterwards, and who has time for a nap when there’s a government to rebuild and a mass murderer to catch?

But she learned long ago that fighting the tears doesn’t work forever. Even the hardest, most weather-worn agents are still human at their core, and pretending otherwise only does more harm than good in the long run.

She weeps a little harder when she realizes it was in this very office that she learned that lesson the hard way. A case gone south, two agents dead, Hannah left standing in the clearing smoke, alone. Those agents had had families, spouses and children waiting at home for them while she only has a Netflix queue in her empty apartment. She didn’t want to talk about it, which resulted in Jason almost handcuffing her to the chair, shouting at her and taking her shouting in return, but in the end he went home with her mascara staining his shirt.

There’s no shoulder for her to cry on now; it’s an empty office, since Forstell hasn’t had the time (or heart) to move his things in. But the desk is still here, large and imposing like the man that once sat behind it.

He deserved more, she thinks savagely. He deserved better revenge than an accidental impaling, blood spreading across a stolen uniform. He deserved a happier life than losing his son, watching his wife distance herself – not that Hannah blames her, but watching her friend bear that grief alone is one of the hardest things she’s ever had to do. Sitting with someone, offering them a drink or a job to occupy themselves with only does so much, and she’s not stupid enough to think that her clumsy efforts made even the smallest dent in the pain she saw in Jason’s eyes.

She sniffs, reaches automatically for the box of tissues that used to be on the left corner of the desk, and falters. He had horrible allergies, practically year round, and always kept a stash of Kleenex in the cabinet on the other side of the room. She doesn’t have the energy to look, and if even those are cleaned out, somehow it would hurt worse than anything else about tonight.

Frustrated, she wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand, grits her teeth. The fight is far from over, not with Lloyd still out there. She feels the hum of her blood, sees the bruises on her knuckles when she clenches her fists, and she wants it. She _wants_ the fight, wants it brought screaming and burning right to her doorstep, because even then she won’t be the only one burning. And that will make the flames feel all the sweeter, that the best man she’s ever known didn’t lose everything for nothing.

She lets out a hard exhale, and carefully shuts the door behind her.

 


End file.
